Obama Revisits Law School to Give a Supreme Court Lecture

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Barack Obama returned to the University of Chicago Law School, where he taught, for the first time as president, saying that Republicans should take action on his nominee to the Supreme Court, Merrick B. Garland.CreditCreditKamil Krzaczynski/European Pressphoto Agency

CHICAGO — For a dozen years at the University of Chicago Law School, President Obama taught students the finer points of constitutional jurisprudence, preaching what he would later try to put into practice in the Oval Office.

On Thursday, he returned to the law school for the first time as president, using the backdrop of his onetime academic life to underscore his demand that Republicans reverse their opposition to holding hearings on his nominee to the Supreme Court, Judge Merrick B. Garland.

“It’s not just that the Republican majority in the Senate intends to vote against a highly qualified judge,” Mr. Obama told about 250 law students and faculty members. “We now have a situation where they’re saying we simply will not consider the nomination itself.”

In the hour-and-a-half session, Mr. Obama gave long answers that may have seemed familiar to students who participate in philosophical legal discussions. He cautioned that the polarization of the political parties threatened to tarnish the judicial system and ultimately undermine Americans’ views of their democracy.

“Those in the Senate have decided that placating our base is more important than upholding their constitutional and institutional roles in our democracy in a way that is dangerous,” the president said.

Mr. Obama warned that Republicans’ stance on the nomination could have lasting effects. If he were succeeded by a Republican, he said, Democrats would be unlikely to give a new nominee an easy path to confirmation, potentially leaving the seat unfilled for an extended period.

Republicans issued responses to Mr. Obama’s talk even before he was finished. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, accused Mr. Obama of trying to deny the American people a voice by ramming through a nominee before the November election.

“They don’t want the American people messing this up for them,” Mr. McConnell said in a speech on Thursday, referring to the president and his allies. “And they’ll say what they always say to get what they want today: a far-left Supreme Court for decades to come.”

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From left, Mr. Obama with Ellen Fulton, Joe Khan, and Dan Johnson in 1999 at the University of Chicago Law School.CreditUniversity of Chicago Law School

White House aides hoped that bringing Mr. Obama back to his roots as a constitutional scholar would help maintain pressure on Republicans to change course. The president started his talk by taking questions from David Strauss, a law professor at the university and a former colleague there.

Mr. Strauss asked whether liberals should be disappointed in his choice of Judge Garland, the centrist chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The president defended his choice, saying that the role of the courts was only rarely to engage in broad societal change.

“The courts are a terrific shield; they are not always a very effective sword,” Mr. Obama said, citing what he said was an adage in constitutional law classes.

Questions from some of the students were somewhat sharper: One asked Mr. Obama about bias in the mass incarceration of minorities, and another wondered whether Democrats were headed toward a serious clash between populists and the establishment.

“The cleavages inside the Democratic Party are not comparable to what we’re seeing inside the Republican Party right now,” Mr. Obama said.

A question about diversity — and whether Judge Garland, a white man from Skokie, Ill., advanced that goal — prompted the president to say that he does not designate any particular appointment for a specific minority group.

“At no point did I say: ‘I need a black lesbian from Skokie in that slot. Can you find me one?’” Mr. Obama said. “That’s not how I approached it.”

Mr. Obama took 10 minutes to answer what he called a “fair” question. He said drone strikes in the first two years of his administration had been carried out with an insufficient “overarching structure.” But he said his administration had since put in place more oversight and a more rigorous decision-making process.

“Part of my job as president is to figure out how I can keep America safe doing the least damage possible in really tough, bad situations,” he said. “And I don’t have the luxury of just not doing anything and then being able to stand back and feel as if my conscience is clear.”

He said he wished he “could just send in Ironman,” and then quickly added that he did not mean that as a joke. He said that he hoped “that the tragedy of war, conflict, terrorism, etc., did not end up” leading the United States to use force in ways that hurt innocent people.

But he said that Hollywood and the popular media had unfairly described drone operators as people who were “irresponsible or bloodless and are going around blowing up children — that’s just not the case.”

Mr. Obama joined the faculty at the University of Chicago in 1991 and taught part time while he pursued a political career as a state senator. He became a senior lecturer, teaching due process and equal protection, a voting rights class and a seminar on racism and law.

After the session, Mr. Obama taped an interview with Chris Wallace, the host of “Fox News Sunday,” to discuss the court fight and other topics, officials said. It will be Mr. Obama’s first appearance on the program since becoming president.

On Thursday night, Mr. Obama headed to the West Coast to help raise money for Democratic candidates. The president was scheduled to attend several events in Los Angeles and San Francisco before returning to Washington on Saturday.

Along for the ride was his daughter Malia, who is in the final stages of deciding which college to attend. White House officials declined to provide details about her schedule in California.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: Obama Revisits Law School to Give a Supreme Court Lecture. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe